Rabi flopping between ground and Rydberg states with dipole-dipole atomic interactions

摘要

We demonstrate Rabi flopping of small numbers of $\rm{^{87}Rb}$ atoms betweenground and Rydberg states with $n\le 43$. Coherent population oscillations areobserved for single atom flopping, while the presence of two or more atomsdecoheres the oscillations. We show that these observations are consistent withvan der Waals interactions of Rydberg atoms.